Human History is Product Management
The history of the world is the history of product management. Today we think of product management in contemporary business terms, defined by the role of the Product Manager in software and other fields. But whether the products are sharpened rocks, or printing presses, or penicillin, or nuclear fission, the advancement of human civilization is almost entirely defined by products. Innovations like the harnessing of fire or the invention of math or writing are not products so much as protocols.
What can be more interesting than inventing products, which gets all the attention, is the management of products after they’re invented. While a product’s eureka moment may be more glamorous, it’s hard to think of a product that doesn’t owe the timing and nature of its impact, or lack thereof, to its management.
One example of product management heavily influencing an invention’s use, and the course of world history, is China’s discovery of gunpowder centuries before guns were invented. In the 9th century AD, alchemists seeking a longevity elixir created something they called “fire potion.” But the compound was used to ignite fireworks for two centuries. A good product manager always explores the potential implementations of any invention, and a modern PM would be expected to uncover the powder’s strategic potential and commercial viability, and in this case to have considered weaponizing the substance. But a Chinese book from the year 1044 contains recipes for its active ingredients in proportions insufficient for military detonation.
But by the 12th century, early bombs and fire lances appeared in battle, and in another hundred years, Chinese troops utilized bombs encased in iron. Finally, in the 13th century, lances that once shot only fire were made to expel arrows and early precursors of bullets.
A contemporary product manager, acknowledging the human cost of the rise of guns, might yet ask what delayed gunpowder’s adoption for strategic advantage? One explanation is the absence of communication media for innovative ideas in the era before the printing press and Internet. But there were other factors in play, which some have argued were political, economic, and even geographical in nature. What is certain is that contemporary product management techniques were, at that time, as far in the future as the invention of the computer.
Nikola Tesla was a more modern example of an inventor without a formal product management discipline to capitalize on some of his most innovative prototypes and patents. Tesla invented wireless energy transmission, but the technology to control it safely was never developed after J.P. Morgan, who was heavily invested in other forms of power transmission, pulled his investment from the project. So in a sense, the management of the Tesla Coil as a product was never adequately resourced, but the example of Tesla’s ingenuity was not lost on master product manager Elon Musk.
Musk’s success with PayPal was predicated on software PM principles like interface simplicity and information security more than on any new technology. His car company advanced manufacturing techniques for electric autos more thoroughly than the design of the vehicles themselves. And SpaceX has turned rockets into reusable products with features that make space missions more practical and affordable. With his take on rocketry, Musk managed a previously invented technology into a commercial breakthrough that expands the spectrum of human possibilities.
What is clear is that world history is not just the story of inventions and the lives changed, saved, or lost as a consequence, but of the management of those inventions by extraordinary minds into products with the power to change the course of human life.
Phil Hopkins is Senior Product Manager at Bridg.com
